He Said/She Said(52)

‘Jamie’s got a new legal team,’ she said. ‘Obviously you could tell at court his family had money, but I didn’t realise how wealthy his dad was until I read the fucking papers.’ She’d seen the reports, then. That line in the Mirror – a crucial eyewitness who wavered in her testimony – couldn’t have escaped her. I braced myself for the challenge, but it didn’t come. ‘That man, Jim Balcombe, his wallet’s a bottomless pit. He can basically afford to keep going till they get the result they want. I looked up the new lawyers. They specialise in getting men like him off the hook.’

I took a large acid gulp of wine. ‘But what new evidence have they got?’

She frowned into her glass. ‘They reckon they’ve traced someone who was at the campfire, the night before the eclipse.’

So this had nothing to do with my testimony. Relief elbowed fear to the side; concern for Beth rushed in.

‘What can they say, if they weren’t even there?’ I asked. My glass was empty already.

‘Apparently they saw us cosying up together. It backs up his argument that we’d been flirting beforehand. Which is bullshit, by the way. I mean, I had met him the night before, that’s how come he was tagging along on the eclipse, but I spent the whole night trying to get away from the slimy fucker.’

I remembered this from Jamie’s cross-examination. It was one of the few points where his temper had come close to the boil. ‘This could be good, though,’ I said. ‘I mean, a new witness might come down on your side. If they were actually witnessing harassment, maybe that could come out under cross-examination.’

‘Yeah, right. Jim Balcombe’s probably already written them a cheque,’ said Beth. ‘Even if he hasn’t, some poor junior barrister versus their QC?’

‘It worked last time,’ I said. Beth was dismissive.

‘I promise you, they’re not going to stop until they buy the result they want.’ She sloshed the wine around her glass. It slid down the inside of the bowl like olive oil. ‘I’m trying not to get too angry at his family. I mean, I’m sure my parents would do the same if it was me, if they had the cash. They all think he’s innocent.’

‘Well, he didn’t convince a jury,’ I said.

‘Thanks to you.’ I couldn’t work out whether her smile was one of gratitude or conspiracy, and I hopped away from the quicksand subject of my evidence.

‘What happens now?’ I said.

Beth refilled my glass, then turned the bottle upside-down in the ice bucket. ‘As I understand it, it’s only leave to appeal. It’s like the step before you actually get to do it, and even then there’s no guarantee that it’ll go back to court. So there’s a lot of steps to go through.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘The worst-case scenario for me is that the judge grants him the right to appeal, and that’s successful, and it goes to a retrial and this time he gets off.’

‘It won’t happen,’ I said, more to convince myself than her.

Beth caught her silent tears at the point of exit, pressing a napkin to the inside corners of her eyes. I motioned for the barman to bring us another bottle. ‘D’you know, this is the first time I’ve been anywhere on my own since the Lizard?’ she said unsteadily. ‘I’ve tried to go out with my mates, tried to act like nothing had happened, but I couldn’t get further than the garden path before I lost it. They’re losing patience with me.’

‘Do they know what happened?’

‘A couple of people know I was raped, but I haven’t told them I’m the Jamie Balcombe girl. I think one of them’s guessed, though; she kept asking where my trial was. You know, it was a high-profile case, it happened at the same time, it doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes. If I’d said Cornwall she’d have known, so I didn’t. Or maybe she doesn’t; maybe she was just showing interest and it’s my paranoia. I wish I’d never told anyone, to be honest. Funnily enough, I wasn’t nervous about coming here to see you. It’s . . .’ Beth brightened, then her face clouded just as quickly. She dropped her chin to her chest. ‘No, it sounds ridiculous.’

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘You feel safe.’ It seemed to me then that it was the scale of the honesty required rather than evasiveness that kept her eyes on the table in front of her. ‘I don’t feel anything bad could happen if I was with you. I know it’s daft. But you did save me, after all.’

I went quiet while the barman refilled our glasses, then set the bottle back in the bucket.

‘I think I should’ve done more,’ I said, quietly. ‘I should’ve come with you, afterwards.’

‘That’s kind,’ she said. ‘But there’s not a lot more you could’ve done. You’d only have been hanging around outside the cells.’

‘The cells?’ I was stunned. ‘They didn’t take you to hospital?’

‘They’ve got a special room at the station but they were using it to interview someone,’ she said. Her shrug acknowledged the horror of her treatment but also the time that had passed since. ‘The cells were the only place I could get any privacy while the police were waiting for a doctor to turn up.’

‘Oh, Beth. As if being examined wasn’t bad enough.’